Compassion by Colin Late - Horror - A young man in the midst of solving a deep, disturbing puzzle begins to pursue the reserved, intriguing woman that his only friend has his eye on. 109 pages - pdf, format 8)

Mr. Late,

No idea what's going on with the spacing at the start. I recommend starting at the top of the page rather than halfway down it.

There's a lot of detailed descriptions. Unless you're filming this yourself or you've got some lined up there's not much need for this.

You spend a lot of lines describing a corridor. A plain corridor. With a door.

All this bold text and detailed descriptions make this hard to read. Very. I read a few pages and I've no idea what's happening.

R

Opening line-------

FADE IN: SECOND DESTINATION - TIME UNCLEAR

We are looking down the barrel-end of a white corridor , or
at least, half of a corridor. The left side is walled with ceiling, floor, etc.
A lone door halfway through the left wall rests, closed.
Our view of the right half of the corridor ends where a
wall would be , but that half of the hallway is a
formless expanse of white, as if the left half of a
rectangle were drawn on a blank piece of paper.
The door on the left wall begins, S.M., to open.

A man's body follows the opening of the door, also in S.M.




You know, they say, you have the first scene or two to catch the reader?

Man, I gotta say, I have no earthly idea of what you are try to show here.

The slug tells me nothing. Only that a destination and the time is unclear.

As a writer, you need to set up the parameters of the story so we know what is going on.

If I'm going to be dropped into a story, let me know where it is, and what time of day it might be.

The action line about the wallway is confusing to say the least.

I would go further, but I'm not. best of luck to you on your writing. If you show up and explain some of this, I might go back and do more more reading.

Take care

Shawn....><

This is the case of a writer (reasonably new, I'm assuming) under the impression that he's responsible for not only writing the story, but also directing it, building the sets and blocking the scenes.  Don't worry about that stuff.  You set up the scenario and let the director worry about directing it, the set builders building the sets, etc.  

Lose the act headings.  The bolds.  The CUT TOs.  The lengthy descriptions, the incidental actions.  Anything that isn't needed to tell the story, any piece of description which doesn't play a part in what happens in each scene, dump it.  Check out Joe Ezterhas's script for Basic Instinct.  Lean, to the point, and a few "DISSOLVES" aside, not a single camera direction.  That's basically what you want to aim for.  Too much description gets in the way of the story; one page in and we know everything about the corridor, but nothing's happened in the story.

And -- and this is my opinion -- avoid stuff like "suddenly" and "begins to."  Scripts are written in present tense; suddenly goes without saying.  "Begins to" is like saying something is on the verge of happening.  We can't see something that is only getting ready to happen; we can only see what does happen, what is happening.  

Brass tacks: this needs a lot of work.  I'm sure you have an interesting story in there somewhere, but the poor execution acts like a smoke screen which prevents us from seeing it.  Tidy it up, trim it down.  Bare essentials.  Only what we NEED to know in order for the story to progress.

Good luck.  Keep writing. :)

- Lon

I should point out the writer of this is called Late. And he's not proving early.

I do hope he's still with us. And not really late. Like that Python parrot.

If so us discussing his script is moot.

I'm going now, as I'm beginning to sound even stranger than usual.

R

I read about the first 50 pages of  compassion and it just now started to intrigue me.  When it started,  it seemed to me to be a straight horror film.  We're looking at a killer and how  he kills his people and we got a good look at his technique.  But then you introduce the Raleigh character and at first,  I was confused by her presence.  And it wasn't until I got to about page 50 when she was practicing her meditation techniques for mark that I realized that the name of this play probably had something to do with their relationship and how  a little  hippy love might cure a psychotic killer.  You're probably right about this and this is a pretty good idea.  And and I'm not sure that that your choice of starting the movie  in typical horror movie fashion was an entirely bad choice.  But in a way,  because  I had started getting into the mood for a psycho killer movie by page 50, it's almost like  the movie that  I began is being taken away from  me.  

Now, maybe this is what you wanted to do and you  wanted to use  the progression of the  movie to show how the change came over this solitary figure; the introduction  of a loving relationship changes his life (sort of a psycho sweet November).  

But what I'm saying is when you start getting  into one type of movie, it is a little difficult to have it taken away.  if what I think is true and  this is turning into more of a surreal romance bride of Frankenstein, I wonder if it might have been better to have the texture  fit the eventuality right from the very beginning.  If I'm wrong, and all we're doing is building empathy for Raleigh, you can toss all this crap and the rubbish.  But if I am right, I think that the killing is a little bit too cold a place to come back from.   And of course, it is a capital crime.

Strange ending. I am a little at a loss. it is a difficult picture to digest altogether because I really couldn't find the definitive thread to the whole thing. I guess we could all it a character study.  Or we could even say that we were inside Mark most of the time and his hallucinations and such. And I really liked some of the killing moments. I thought they were pretty well written and visualized. But the story as a whole was a little difficult  to see and therefore, the drama was a little hard to come by. I am glad I read it.